Sunday, November 29, 2009

One of the things I love most about the liturgical year is that our new year begins a month before the secular calendar turns over. It is fitting that our year ends in November with the Feasts of All Saints and All Souls, and a month of remembering the dead and looking toward the end times, and then begins again in celebration of the Incarnation -- the coming of the Light of the World.

(It is a happy accident that the Thursday before the beginning of the new liturgical year is usually Thanksgiving -- what better way to start the cycle over than by looking back at the past year with gratitude?)

This year we will be spending Christmas with my family in Massachusetts, but I am enjoying decorating the apartment for Advent. I set up my advent wreath on the seasons table, and surrounded it with a few pine cones and other things Daniel and I have collected outside.

I am planning to set out Daniel's shoes for St. Nicholas on the 6th, and bake my annual ginger snaps, probably for St. Lucy's Day on the 13th.

I have a few gifts to finish knitting, and a few more to purchase.

My husband has papers and finals looming in the next couple of weeks, so my goal is to keep things as relaxed and low-key around here as possible, before we get to really celebrate Christmas with my family!

The First Sunday of Advent

"Advent is concerned with the very connection between memory and hope which is so necessary to man. Advent's intention is to awaken the most profound and basic emotional memory within us, namely, the memory of the God who became a child.

This is a healing memory. It brings hope.

The purpose of the Church's year is continually to rehearse her great history of memories, to awaken the heart's memory so that it can discern the star of hope.... It is the beautiful task of Advent to awaken in all of us memories of goodness and thus to open doors of hope."

--Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Seek That Which Is Above

Sunday, November 22, 2009

The Feast of Christ the King



As the visions during the night continued, I saw One like a son of man coming, on the clouds of heaven; When he reached the Ancient One and was presented before him,
He received dominion, glory, and kingship; nations and peoples of every language serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not be taken away, his kingship shall not be destroyed.

Daniel 7:13-14

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Lately I have been rereading two Alice von Hildebrand books, By Love Refined (which I quoted from in my last entry) and The Privilege of Being a Woman.

The first is a series of letters written to a young friend in her first years of marriage. It is full of invaluable wisdom, advice, and inspiration for any Christian woman trying to live her vocation to marriage faithfully. The epistolatory style is warm and accessible, and she strikes just the right note between general principles and concrete application. I particularly love the way she talks about taking the clear vision of our beloved at his best that we are given through love and storing it away in a treasure chest for those times when we are angry or disappointed or lose sight of the beauty of marriage.

The second, The Privilege of Being a Woman, covers some of the same ideas, sometimes the ideas that underpin the advice in By Love Refined, but in a rather more systematic and scholarly way. I could read this book over and over, and I think that anyone who wants an alternative and an answer to secular feminism should do the same.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Inspiration for the week


"Like the oriental carpet weaver, the good wife must be an artist of love. She must remember her mission and never waste the little deeds that fill her day -- the precious bits of wool she's been given to weave the majestic tapestry of married love."

--Alice von Hildebrand, By Love Refined: Letters to a Young Bride

The Feast of All Saints


After this I had a vision of a great multitude,
which no one could count,
from every nation, race, people, and tongue.
They stood before the throne and before the Lamb,
wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.
They cried out in a loud voice:

“Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne,
and from the Lamb.”

All the angels stood around the throne
and around the elders and the four living creatures.
They prostrated themselves before the throne,
worshiped God, and exclaimed:

“Amen. Blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving,
honor, power, and might
be to our God forever and ever. Amen.”

Revelation 7:9-12